Lena Dunham Quits Twitter, Says It's Not A Safe Space For Her

30/09/2015 11:15:21 AM

Well, this sucks

As any woman who has, say, dared to voice an opinion, or appeared to be happy with their body/life choices could attest - the internet, in particular social media - can be a dark and frightening place.

A recent study found that while men are harrassed more online, women are harrassed more severely - with extreme bullying, personal threats and threats of a sexually violent nature depressingly common.

Basically it's a murky bog out there.

One woman who has long swum up against the vileness of said bog is Lena Dunhan, the creator of Girls, author of Not That Kind of Girl and co-runner of the Lenny newsletter (which arrived in inboxes today - hooray!).

As a woman who is an ardent feminist - basically a red flag for the deep, dank well of misogynists out there - Dunham has experienced extreme harrassment on social media. And she's had enough.

In an interview with Kara Swisher on her Re/Code podcast Dunham spoke about Twitter no longer being somewhere that she felt comfortable.

“I don’t look at Twitter anymore. I tweet, but I do it through someone else,” Dunham said. “I really appreciate that anybody follows me at all, so I didn’t want to cut off my relationship to it completely, but it truly wasn’t a safe space for me.”

For Dunham, the "verbal violence" was getting to her, even though she tried not to let it.

"Even if you think, like, 'Oh I can read, like, 10 mentions that say I should be stoned to death' and kind of, like, laugh and move on," she said. "That's verbal abuse. Those aren't words that should be directed at you ever. And so, for me personally, it was safer to stop [using Twitter]."

Dunham also said in the interview that she no longer reads the websites Gawker or Jezebel, likening them to an abusive relationship.

The interview comes after Dunham experienced an onslaught of body shaming comments following an Instagram post where Dunham wore a pair of her boyfriend's Calvin Klein undies and wrote about how she had experienced a "tough" week.

"I am certainly no self-help guru but here is what I know tonight: when you take the time and space you need, kindly and responsibly, you're suddenly available to the people you love in a whole new way," she wrote.

Which makes sense - taking yourself out of toxic situations - be it a bad relationship, or out of the path of a Twitter bully (or, you know, thousands of them), is a necessary and kind thing to do for yourself. That frees up the emotional space for the only people that matter - the ones that love and care about you completely.

We'll miss your tweets, Lena. And while we totally endorse the idea of a Twitter ghostwriter, we'd also like to live in a world where women don't have to make themselves smaller or invisible in order to get by.